Riordan Manufacturing - Analyze Hr System

BSA 375 WK 2 Individual Assignment

3/9/2010

BrentBruney

University of Phoenix

Service Request SR-rm-004

Analyze HR System

Organization: Riordan Manufacturing

Locations: All Plant Locations

Requester: Hugh McCauley, COO

Description of Request:

Analyze the HR system to integrate the existing variety of tools in use today into a single integrated application.

Background of Request:

The background of this request consists of adding a new and more up-to-date information technology system to the Human Resource Department to help improve the process and overall save time and money for the company.

Expected Results/Impact when completed:

The project should be completed in approximately six months, which will allow the new system to be utilized in the second quarter of next year.

According to John W. Satzinger, Robert B. Jackson, Stephen D. Burd Systems Analysis and Design in a Changing World (2004), the analysis phase can be divided into six primary activities:

▪ Gather information

▪ Define system requirements

▪ Prioritize requirements

▪ Prototype for feasibility and discovery

▪ Generate and evaluate alternatives

▪ Review recommendations with management

The gathering of information requires one to get the right information from the right individuals; stakeholders are all the people who have an interest in the success of a new system. Stakeholders are categorized into three groups:

(1) Those who will use the system; in this case the HR Department.

(2)The clients those who are paying for the system to be installed.

(3) The technical staff, those who ensure that the system is installed and running properly while the system is in place.

"A Model of Elicitation Requirements enables analysts to no longer be bound by predefined methodologies, but, instead, to create new elicitation methodologies easily, by defining situational characteristics and then observing and recording the resultant instances of methodologies" (Hickey, A., & Davis, A. , 2004, ). Preference elicitation is the problem of developing a decision support system capable of generating recommendations to a user, which in turn will assist in the decision making process. It is important for such a system to model user's preferences accurately, find hidden preferences and avoid redundancy. The main question

▪ What are the business processes and operations?

▪ How are the business processes performed?

▪ What are the information requirements?

Analysts use seven primary techniques to gather this information, and one technique ensures its correctness. The seven fact-finding techniques are the following:

▪ Review existing reports, forms, and procedure descriptions

▪ Conduct interviews and discussions with users

▪ Observe and document business processes

▪ Build prototypes

▪ Distribute and collect questionnaires

▪ Conduct JAD sessions

▪ Research vendor solutions

The design method I propose to use for this project is the JAD (Joint Applications Design) technique. JAD is a technique used to expedite the investigation of system requirements. The objective of JAD is to compress all of these activities into a shorter series of JAD sessions with users and project team members. An individual JAD session may last from a single day to a week. During the session, all of the fact-finding, model-building, policy decisions and